An inconvenient truth

[KennyTM~]

Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Dave wrote:
>>>
>>> Anyhow, this segment of the discussion is somewhat orthogonal to the 
>>> rest of it as I think we all agree a Unicode notation will be an 
>>> alternative, not an exclusive choice for template instantiations.
>>>
>>
>> Alternative? That's really what we need; a different group of symbols 
>> that denote exactly the same thing, in Unicode no less <g>
>>
>> This whole discussion is getting goofy.
>>
>> Imagine a code maintainer who has a hard enough time grasping what the 
>> template code is doing, much less having to slog through code where 
>> the original developer(s) decided to use the Unicode "alternative" 
>> depending on what day of the week it was.
>>
>> Beautiful!
>>
>> Let's all step back for a second here, and then just grant that 
>> Walter's original idea is good enough and move on to more important 
>> issues.
>>
>> It took me all of, oh, 5 seconds to look at some D template examples 
>> to figure out what was going on and start emulating it with a "Hello D 
>> Template World" of my own for a little practice. So I think the notion 
>> that new users are going to eschew D or D templates based on the !() 
>> syntax is just plain wrong, especially since somehow the discussion 
>> has now changed to a Unicode Alternative (which, BTW, would only make 
>> it harder on new users).
> 
> You'd be amazed. I personally know two guys - awesome hackers - who 
> wouldn't touch Eiffel in part because it introduces comments with "--". 
> Not only that, but for one of them that was all the example he had to 
> get to never even look at Eiffel. In fact I think this anecdote will 
> start the introduction of TDPL. I think it's very instructive with 
> regard to how much people care about syntax, and in what arbitrary ways.
> 
> Andrei

Why no one says this when “enum foo = 1;” was introduced. -__-"